[HN Gopher] Amsterdam supermarket offers free groceries, life co...
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Amsterdam supermarket offers free groceries, life coach to
struggling families
Author : zerof1l
Score : 172 points
Date : 2023-02-20 11:58 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nltimes.nl)
(TXT) w3m dump (nltimes.nl)
| madsbuch wrote:
| Related to this: I started reading the Dutch author Rutger
| Bregman who iterates the point that poor people are just that:
| Poor. What they need is usually not help but money.
|
| If one believes that this is a well intended effort that,
| however, is nothing more that a publicity stunt.
|
| This appears to be a private initiative, and the only potential
| harm done here is iterating a point that is wrong (if one puts
| themselves in the Rousseau camp).
| luckylion wrote:
| I'm not sure that's true unless you account for different
| reasons for poverty. My neighbor is classified as poor, at
| least judging his official income. He's long-term unemployed by
| choice because he doesn't like working and has three children
| he'd have to pay alimony for if he had an income. So he instead
| does not work, get's ~60% of average net income (part of that
| isn't in cash, but paying for housing, health insurance etc),
| has lots of free time, and the state pays the alimony for him.
|
| He's poor. Sure, doubling welfare payments would make him have
| more than the average citizen, but it wouldn't address the
| reason he's poor: because he doesn't want to work. If he
| worked, he'd have more money, but the calculation is simple:
| get 500 Euros + 77sqm flat + utilities + health insurance for 0
| hours / year, or get 2500 Euros, pay everything yourself
| (including alimony) and have 300-400 Euros more a month for
| 1600 hours / year.
| madsbuch wrote:
| This is completely aligned with the initial point. Do you
| think a life coach would benefit him? It is clearly not
| because he is stupid. He just made some life decisions that
| you do not agree with.
| luckylion wrote:
| Pretty much everyone that is poor and isn't a first
| generation immigrant who has arrived in the last two years
| is poor because of "some life decisions". And _some_ of
| them a life coach could help. _Some_ are doing their best
| and really just need a little bit of help to get on their
| feet, and giving them that help without much hassle is the
| best you can do. And others are simply lazy, and giving
| them more money to be lazy is a waste of money.
|
| I'm not saying that _some_ poverty can be sustainably
| alleviated by cash. But some cannot. Claims about poverty
| should consider that not all poverty is the same (and most
| poverty in Western countries (maybe minus the US) is
| relative, not absolute).
| ryandrake wrote:
| I guess the point is that with a robust safety net,
| people wouldn't have to live in crippling poverty because
| of "some life decisions". The first-order reason they are
| in poverty is that they don't have money, so if the
| safety net is robust enough, that first-order problem can
| be solved by cash. If you think it would also be helpful
| to coach them on the second-order problem (decision-
| making skills), great. But money is the immediate and
| direct solution to the problem.
| luckylion wrote:
| But there really is barely any absolute poverty in the
| Netherlands (or Germany, or Denmark, or Sweden, or
| France, or ....), we're mostly talking about relative
| poverty, that is nobody is starving or can't get
| healthcare, or is homeless (yes, homelessness exists, but
| it's primarily a substance abuse/mental health issue)
| because they're poor, because the government covers all
| of that, and the few exceptions are e.g. undocumented
| immigrants who aren't eligible.
|
| They're poor because we define poverty as having 60% or
| 50% of the median net income. You still live in a flat,
| you still have enough money for food and you don't need
| to beg to heat your home, but you'll have trouble
| affording things that average citizens consider normal,
| like taking trips, eating out, buying gadgets, or saving
| money.
|
| In both absolute and relative poverty, more money helps
| alleviate it. But giving people enough money to escape
| abject poverty is something else entirely from enforcing
| everyone to earn exactly the same so that nobody could
| have less than the median.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| groceries == money
| madsbuch wrote:
| I'd love to see you accept your monthly salary paid out in
| fresh vegetable leafs!
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| This looks like a combination of supermarket and charity; both
| are great, but does the combination make sense? A regular
| supermarket is a for-profit legal entity, a charity usually has
| tax-exemption, how can one manage the legal complications of
| mixing it?
| luckylion wrote:
| What's the complication? Their supermarket seems to be "shop
| normal items, sit down for a session with a social worker
| instead of paying", so they don't have a commercial interest.
| Seems like a good approach to get people the items they need
| and also reaching them with social work and understanding their
| needs and what problems they might need help with.
| ambrose2 wrote:
| So where is the money coming from? Can they sustain the
| program? Who decides the cutoff? Do they get tax exemptions
| to write off the losses?
| kvdveer wrote:
| > So where is the money coming from?
|
| Municipal subsidies, private and corporate donations. I
| assume a municipal social worker decides who gets in and
| who does not. This is a really common approach in the
| Netherlands, which has been going on for decades for other
| projects. I can't remember any news articles mentioning
| significant problems with this approach.
|
| This looks to me like an extended "voedselbank" which
| involves social work. I don't see anything truly novel or
| problematic with this approach.
| luckylion wrote:
| > So where is the money coming from?
|
| Donations, apparently, likely both monetary and products.
|
| > Who decides the cutoff?
|
| They mentioned in the article that they're not a food bank,
| and they don't need proof of poverty. Since they connect
| the "shopping" to working with one of their life coaches (I
| don't know how often or how long you need to talk to them),
| I guess that's a deterrent against random rich people
| getting their diapers there. Or maybe they do, because they
| also want to talk to someone about their life, in which
| case I suppose they're also the target audience.
|
| I have no clue about the sustainability or tax exemptions.
| It sounds like the supermarket is a way to get more people
| in the community in contact with their social workers.
| Outreach programs aren't that rare, the combination with a
| supermarket is, but it doesn't strike me as that odd.
| vostok wrote:
| Companies don't need special tax exemptions to write off
| losses.
|
| Typically, expenses directly reduce income without any need
| for a special exemption.
| logifail wrote:
| > Companies don't need special tax exemptions to write
| off losses
|
| There are places where selling certain product types
| below cost isn't OK, Wal-Mart got into trouble for this
| in Germany:
|
| https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-
| xpm-2000-sep-09-fi-18061...
| vostok wrote:
| That's so interesting. Thanks for sharing.
| tpxl wrote:
| This is called price dumping. First time I've heard of
| any action being taken to prevent it though.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)
| Semaphor wrote:
| Interesting, I hadn't heard of that one.
|
| Relevant:
|
| > Wal-Mart's prices were matched and even undercut by the
| Aldi and Lidl food chains, which also were ordered to
| cease selling below cost or face fines of about $445,000
| for each product sold in violation of the order.
|
| They probably still would have lost, our supermarket
| system is very cut-throat ;)
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| So it is not a supermarket, just a charity? Regular people
| cannot go, buy something and pay like in any other
| supermarket? I haven't seen that explained in the article.
| [deleted]
| INTPenis wrote:
| In Malmo, Sweden, they started a special store for people who can
| prove that their income is below a certain threshold. These
| people get a membership to the store and are granted access to
| goods that are much cheaper.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| Change my mind: The Netherlands are in the top percentile of
| every quality of life metric except for weather.
|
| From pensions, to drugs, to sex work, to engineering they are
| always at the frontier.
|
| No big tech but that's more a function of 'working to live' vs.
| 'living to work' than outright inability to mint unicorns.
| tmnvdb wrote:
| Housing affordability is a problem at the moment.
| zachrip wrote:
| I moved to the Netherlands when I found out that I am going
| blind. I really enjoy it here - it's very accessible which is
| my number one need; but with that accessibility comes a more
| peaceful and active lifestyle. I'm starting a family here and
| I've been very impressed all around about the process. It makes
| being a good parent much easier: parental leave, cheap birth,
| government takes care of things like vaccinations/baby
| checkups, parks are everywhere, and many dads take "papadag" on
| Wednesday off from work to spend time with their kids. I'm
| really happy to be here and I appreciate all of the benefits
| that come with it. I had to start a business to get a visa but
| despite all of that hard work it's still very worth it to me.
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| I have a relative that is an university professor of some
| social sciences in the Netherlands (not sure what is the exact
| title); she is very left-leaning, she attended college and
| doctoral degree in the US and she was a professor in US for
| more than 10 years and in the Netherlands for almost 15 years:
| even she is not that optimistic about the country. I had very
| long discussions in the past 10 years (we spend family
| vacations together) and she believes the Netherlands is better
| in many aspects than US, but there are areas where it is a lot
| worse. The most obvious ones: healthcare, quality of services
| and social relations (including large scale xenofobia, not so
| well hidden).
| throw_pm23 wrote:
| * Attitude towards food. In many workplaces, universities,
| schools, etc. a doughnut with some syrup and colored candy
| sprinkled on it, or a sad sandwich of a lettuce between two
| slices of bread is seen as an acceptable lunch. Compared to the
| Netherlands, the country of Germany or Nordic countries seem
| like the ultimate foodie-paradise, which tells it all. Perhaps
| dutch people consume all the good food for supper in the
| privacy of their homes, but this is invisible to the public.
|
| EDIT: "frikandel-automaat" -- that beast tells all you need to
| know about a country's attitude towards food.
|
| * Over-designed, over-controlled environment. If your idea of
| high quality of life is ultramodern office-buildings with no
| natural light offices, cities with every square foot either
| concrete or manicured lawn, buildings where you cannot open a
| window, and cannot water the plant because some central
| authority takes care of it, and every aspect of your life is
| efficiently managed, then go for it. I for one, need some
| unstructured "messiness" every now and then, otherwise I start
| to feel tense.
|
| * people are nice and open though, society seems to work pretty
| well, and companies are efficient. No unicorns? ASML makes the
| machines that make the machines that make semiconductors, the
| modern world runs on them.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > no natural light
|
| What natural light? As I said weather is very gloomy there
| olivier_martel wrote:
| You forgot a big one: Urban Planning.
| ddorian43 wrote:
| Programmer wages are pretty low compared to cost of living.
| chaoz_ wrote:
| Rent is not cheap, but if you are okay with 1 hour commute
| you can live in the Hague, Leiden or Utrecht. Less tourists
| also.
|
| Btw, there are large companies in AMS (Booking, Amazon, Meta,
| Uber) and some financial shops. It's not comparable with US,
| but definitely in top3 in EMEA region.
| gield wrote:
| Switzerland, France, Germany, Luxemburg, Spain.
|
| The Netherlands is definitely not in the top 3 of European
| tech wages vs cost of living.
| ddorian43 wrote:
| > Btw, there are large companies in AMS (Booking, Amazon,
| Meta, Uber) and some financial shops. It's not comparable
| with US, but definitely in top3 in EMEA region.
|
| Yes, only those big companies pay "ok" wages.
|
| To all others thinking "but free healthcare/whatever/etc",
| then why don't these companies pay enough (compared to
| USA,England) for remote where you only pay in gross?
| asdff wrote:
| "but free healthcare" is ridiculous too. I don't think
| people understand how cheap healthcare now is in the
| U.S.. I know people on ACA plans that cover health,
| dental, and vision, copays in line with what I pay, for
| about $75 a month (I think this is silver tier). Chances
| are you are taking a much bigger salary hit working in
| europe than $75 a month. I guess you can save on
| education, but that savings probably starts looking
| smaller too when you consider in state tuition rates,
| community college credit prices, or the fact most private
| colleges dish out full ride financial aid packages like
| candy to anyone making below a certain threshold.
| dtech wrote:
| This is kind of an outdated notion. In the 90's NL was very
| progressive, but after 3 decades of conservative-neoliberal
| governments it's middling at most.
|
| E.g. selling weed to stores is still illegal - massively
| funding the underworld because there's no legal supply - which
| is quite backwards compared to Canada & some US states. Or up
| until a few years ago NL was dead-last in the EU for amount of
| parental leave a father gets (2 days), which was only changed
| when the EU forced them to by setting a minimum. Most
| (semi-)public services like health, public transport, taxes and
| education are also performing poorly and/or very fragile after
| long periods of budget cuts and neoliberal policies.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| > > massively funding the underworld because there's no legal
| supply
|
| If the underworld only crime is to sell weed then what's the
| problem? It's just a matter of semantics. I think what you
| mean is that it's defacto legal but you have to chit-chat
| with some guy or gal who'd also try to sell you some of
| his/her music or a club entrance when they are DJ-ing as
| opposed to just ordering it on Amazon
|
| The football ultras/hooligans phenomenon might also qualify
| as underworld but they mostly beat each others up
| lm28469 wrote:
| > If the underworld only crime is to sell weed then what's
| the problem?
|
| Well it doesn't exist in a vacuum, crime = money, money =
| competition, competition = violence [0]
|
| And it's not only weed, they're one of the main point of
| entry for coke in Europe [1]
|
| Some even start to talk about a narco state given how
| widespread drug related gang violence and corruption is
| [2][3]
|
| But yeah I guess it's easier to see it as a western
| progressive paradise
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/oct/06/cartel-
| journali...
|
| [1] https://www.euractiv.com/section/justice-home-
| affairs/news/e...
|
| [2] https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/narco-
| state-neth...
|
| [3] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50821542
| rtpg wrote:
| The "problem" with this sort of stuff happening in a non
| legal way is that you end up in a space with no worker
| protections, no legal recourse, a lot of uncertainty that
| can lead to exploitation, etc etc etc
|
| Society existed that way for a long time but there's a
| reason we stopped doing feudalism
|
| To your point not having everything enter the capitalist
| sphere is good, I think it's possible to navigate one
| without the other
| actionfromafar wrote:
| The dark economy in the NL also now have enough cash at
| hand to bribe and threaten officials of all sorts.
| asdff wrote:
| Just like Italy then with the mafia and the landfills.
| mettamage wrote:
| > If the underworld only crime is to sell weed then what's
| the problem? It's just a matter of semantics.
|
| No it's not because it means it's also more profitable.
| More profit while something is illegal means it's more
| attractive to criminals to pursue. It means that the coke
| dealers, criminals from other EU countries (eastern
| Europeans or Russians) and other people that don't give a
| shit about The Netherlands will take it up and do it as a
| side hustle thing. And sure there are also "pure weed
| dealers", and yes for this group it's (almost) pure
| semantics. However, they now have to deal with crazed
| criminals that aren't afraid of shooting you when things go
| sour.
|
| Source: I'm from Amsterdam, I've heard enough stories and
| anecdotal evidence is enough to challenge you on your
| assumptions that it's "just a matter of semantics".
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Can you keep it? As I read 1.55 births per woman, with
| population growth probably fueled by low skilled immigrant
| labor. Yeah, you might educate them in time to maintain that
| high standard of living, you might not.
| asdff wrote:
| They have too many nimbys that make housing expensive and
| squander their transit infrastructure. places like zunderdorp
| or ransdorp or really that whole area outside the a10 in
| amsterdam are ripe opportunities for housing that is perfectly
| bikeable to a whole lot of transit, currently being used for
| agriculture like it has been for the last millenia, and at this
| rate will continue to be used for that for the next millenia.
| Then that leaves you with adding housing in town to match job
| growth demand, seems logical right? But you can't because of
| height limit ordinances prevent adding any meaningful housing
| supply even if you were allowed to take down a historic
| building. This leaves you with the inevitable end result we
| have today, of Amsterdam being one of the most expensive places
| to live in Europe.
| mrsuprawsm wrote:
| There are a decent amount of big tech jobs here.
| Uber/Meta/Amazon have a local presence, there are many other
| non-FAANG tech companies HQ'd here (Booking.com, Adyen), and
| some household names that also hire remotely or have some
| presence here.
| user_7832 wrote:
| > The Netherlands are in the top percentile of every quality of
| life metric except for weather.
|
| I'm not going to say it's bad because on average it isn't, but
| this is patently untrue. The Dutch housing market is one of the
| worst in the world, and doubly so if you don't speak Dutch or
| are on a budget. Double whammy for international students.
|
| The healthcare system is... let me put it this way. As an
| Indian, I'd rather be in the Netherlands if there was a
| critical medical condition. You're not actively suicidal or
| dying in the next 24 hours? Excellent, join the seven month
| waitlist for getting medical help. Or become suicidal enough to
| go to the ER, and then back to the waitlist you go!
|
| In India (and what I've seen/heard of UK/US private healthcare)
| you can get faster treatment if you can pay. Nothing of that
| sort here haha.
|
| (I should probably add that Germany and Belgium have similar
| issues from what I've heard, though that doesn't excuse the
| Netherlands.)
| andrewl wrote:
| This is the only thing I ever read about healthcare in the
| Netherlands (and it's from 2007, so I have no idea what
| things are like now):
|
| https://supasuze.wordpress.com/2007/07/09/the-dutch-
| midwife-...
|
| I first read it back in 2007, but I've always remembered it.
| gield wrote:
| >(I should probably add that Germany and Belgium have similar
| issues from what I've heard, though that doesn't excuse the
| Netherlands.)
|
| For Belgium at least, these issues are not similar. Our
| housing prices are high in some cities but definitely not on
| the level of the Netherlands. And the waiting list for
| medical help is much less of an issue here.
|
| Belgium definitely has their own issues (often issues that
| the Netherlands don't have), but the issues you listed are
| not as relevant in Belgium.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > and doubly so if you don't speak Dutch or are on a budget
|
| Like literally anywhere in the world, in the vast majority of
| country if you show up poor and not able to speak the
| language you won't find a place to live.
| user_7832 wrote:
| Yeah but not really. In a lot of places if you can pay
| market rates landlords couldn't care less about your
| language, especially if both of you are fluent in English.
| Important to note perhaps that this language thing is more
| for common/shared accommodations, not standalone units.
|
| Also by on a budget I mean a budget that'll get me a very
| decent place even in for example Germany. The prices and
| costs of accommodation in the Netherlands is hilarious, ask
| anyone living here. One of my professors literally moved to
| Belgium to save on rent, despite needing to make a multi-
| hour journey when commuting multiple times a week.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > In a lot of places if you can pay market rates
| landlords couldn't care less about your language
|
| How will you sign a contract you can't read ? Outside of
| tech hubs you can't even find a job in western Europe
| (not even speaking about the rest of the world) if you
| don't speak the language, without a job you won't find a
| place to rent
|
| > Also by on a budget I mean a budget that'll get me a
| very decent place even in for example Germany.
|
| Compared to which city ?
|
| https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
| living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
|
| https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
| living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
|
| https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-
| living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
| mettamage wrote:
| I'm Dutch and work in tech. One of the reasons I'm a
| digital nomad is because Amsterdam is too expensive. For
| reference: the city center of Berlin is about twice as
| cheap, and Berlin isn't cheap anymore nowadays.
| asdff wrote:
| Well, one of the big reasons for that in the netherlands is
| they don't build places to live. Take a look at the
| satellite view of amsterdam. Huge cycling town, you'd
| expect everything within a 5 or 10 mile radius of the
| central rail station to be built up pretty well to maximize
| the bikeshed, right? Nope. Medieval low rise apartments
| that are illegal to replace, and protected agricultural
| lands within 5 miles just to rub salt on the wound that the
| farmer's tractors harvesting crops for export in zunderdorp
| have better transit access than you, a rent burdoned low
| income worker central to the amsterdam economy.
| sofixa wrote:
| I've heard relatively bad things about Dutch healthcare from
| people who have had to use it - basically the doctors will
| either give you vitamins, or antibiotics and operate, with
| little nuance inbetween. Maybe it was "foreign student/young
| person" bias though.
| gattilorenz wrote:
| If they prescribed antibiotics it's either not true or the
| person was bordering septicaemia :)
| mettamage wrote:
| Dutch healthcare has many issues, also for non-foreigners.
| emptyfile wrote:
| [dead]
| osener wrote:
| Better source: https://www.dutchnews.nl/features/2023/01/a-fresh-
| approach-f...
| clnq wrote:
| I wonder how effective life coaching is to people in poverty. The
| condition seems to have a risk of just humiliating those who are
| poor. Do they have the scale to do this for 80 families or more,
| or is it more of a rush job with the usual life advice those who
| are rich patronizingly give to those in poverty?
| mathieuh wrote:
| Perhaps "life coaching" here means something similar to a thing
| we have in the UK called the Citizens Advice Bureau which
| basically helps you navigate bureaucracy, as opposed to
| charlatans with shiny teeth teaching 10 simple tricks to get
| rich
| foobarian wrote:
| You know, life coach helping a group of those in need almost
| sounds like a shepherd looking out for a flock... now where
| have I heard this before?
|
| I really wish we could take the good parts of organized
| religion and turn them into regular institutions. In our town
| the local library has taken on a strong community center role
| but that's just because the staff there happens to be
| excellent.
| bluGill wrote:
| That depends. People are in poverty for many different reasons.
|
| I know people in poverty where the root cause is downs
| syndrome: they mentally don't have the ability to be any more
| than assistant usher at the movie theater. They can handle most
| usher tasks, but when there is someone difficult they need the
| head usher: some 16 year old kid who has been on the job for at
| least 2 weeks.
|
| I know people in poverty because they despite getting straight
| A's in school they dropped out at 16 and started having kids
| (I'm not sure if they dropped out before are after the kids
| started coming, it doesn't matter: both dropping out and having
| kids were intentional decisions). 10 years latter it finally
| occurred to them how much their bad life choices has hurt them.
|
| There is nothing a coach can do to help the first person, no
| matter what they will still be in poverty as they are not
| capable of doing better. The second just needs a bit of help to
| turn life around - this help will work now, but at 21 this
| person would have refused all help as they didn't see that they
| were doing anything wrong in the first place. Most people in
| poverty are somewhere in the middle of these two.
|
| The above is based on real people (though I'm hiding a lot of
| details for privacy reasons). These are not strawman examples,
| but they should feel like it. I intentionally picked people who
| are on the two far ends of the extremes.
| sofixa wrote:
| Person 1 doesn't have to be in poverty, in most developed
| countries there would be disability
| help/insurance/payments/etc. to help them live a non-
| impoverished life because they cannot realistically work a
| job.
| bluGill wrote:
| Payments just mean someone will defraud the person in
| question. Even if we assume no fraud, this person is still
| the bottom of society.
| retrac wrote:
| In most developed countries, disability payments mean
| living in significant, often crippling poverty.
|
| Here in Canada, a single disabled person that is expected
| to live independently receives about 800 USD per month from
| the government. Out of that, they're expected to pay all
| their expenses. Canada is relatively typical as such things
| go. In France or Germany it's about 1000 USD a month. It's
| about 900 USD in the United States. It's only some 300 -
| 500 USD in the UK.
|
| Depending on jurisdiction, there may or may not be
| subsidized housing which can make a big difference; but
| either way, many are paying market rate for housing. There
| are also other benefits, etc., that may alter the picture.
| But the overall picture is very very poor. The Scandinavian
| countries are the only major exception I can think of,
| where the disabled living only on a government pension
| might not actually be in poverty.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Yeah people Canada have been wondering where this
| explosion of homelessness has come from, well, when you
| look at the amounts that minimum income provides, in an
| environment of exploding rents, it's state sanctioned
| poverty.
| detrites wrote:
| Seems a bit close to "I wonder how effective knowledge is to
| people who don't have it."
|
| The two things required for this program to work are useful
| information & willing learners.
|
| By making it free, the organisers are incentivised to provide
| the first, and by requiring participation with a coach they're
| asking for the second. Could your question be more accurately
| stated as "is the information good?".
|
| People stay in bad situations when they don't know how to
| change and/or they don't want to change. The former is kind of
| up to those with knowledge, however ultimately nobody can do
| anything about the latter but those affected themselves.
| [deleted]
| xyzelement wrote:
| I keep hearing this but it doesn't resonate against my
| experience.
|
| My family came to the US in the early 90's with zero dollars,
| but now we're doing well. The difference between us and those
| who didn't make it out of the neighborhood was what we did with
| the little money and time we had.
|
| Basic things like figuring out how to get a bank account open
| vs paying a check cashing fee, things add up quickly. If you
| don't figure that stuff out, you're screwed. I find it off for
| poverty-advocates to get indignant when poverty education comes
| up, because they don't understand how much ignorance/lack of
| interest/lack of skill exists in those communities, and how
| much of a headwind that is.
|
| Forget things like encouraging your kids to study in school,
| apply for competitive courses - etc. Even if your kids are
| capable of that, if you don't know to push them, you perpetuate
| your poverty. In contrast to say Asian immigrants who drive
| their kids to excel and go from poverty to 1% in one
| generation. Any coaching that helps people recognize and take
| advantage of the resources and opportunities in front of them -
| if it actually sticks - is super valuable.
| dangwhy wrote:
| > My family came to the US in the early 90's with zero
| dollars, but now we're doing well.
|
| May I ask what was the path to financial well being ?
|
| Coming to US with zero dollars is pretty common and doesn't
| really tell the whole picture. You might come with things
| that can be converted to money later like an education,
| family connections ect.
|
| I came to us with no money but I had education for in demand
| jobs. Lots of patels from india come to usa with zero dollars
| but they have family connections that get them started on a
| path to setting up a business. We are close to a patel family
| that came to usa with zero dollars but grinded for years to
| finally become business owners. They are insane hardworkers
| but having that family connection that set them up on the
| path was critical imo.
| phphphphp wrote:
| The disadvantageous behaviour you describe exists at every
| level. There's wealthy families who couldn't care less about
| any of the things you describe -- most generational wealth is
| lost within a few generations!
|
| There's also a selection bias amongst immigrants like
| yourself: immigrant families have already made the biggest
| leap, they've uprooted their family and gone to a new
| country, and so they're already on the path towards all of
| the behaviours you describe -- they didn't arrive in America
| and then decide that education was the path forwards, they
| arrived in America with optimism and gusto and were _ready to
| do whatever it takes to realise their dreams_.
|
| Many people just want to live a life, they don't want to
| pursue greatness at all costs. Many of those people are in
| poverty, many of those people are rich. Many people are not
| suited to a life of intense pressure to succeed.
|
| The problem of poverty education as the solution to poverty
| is that it is built on the idea that education is _why_
| people are in poverty, and that if they just knew a bit more
| than they'd be doing great... but that's not really true,
| poverty is a trap, education cannot save you from the poverty
| trap.
|
| The value of support for people in poverty is that it gives
| them a better chance to escape poverty and for many people,
| education is a part of that support, but it's important to
| understand that the solution to poverty is not education
| about how to open a checking account, it's the whole spectrum
| of support from financial to education.
|
| Give every person in poverty a million dollars, and many will
| escape poverty and go on to live very prosperous lives -- no
| education needed.
| jimbokun wrote:
| "Give every person in poverty a million dollars..." and you
| will kick off hyperinflation because you will need to print
| so much currency to make that a reality it will devalue all
| of the existing dollars in circulation.
| phphphphp wrote:
| it's not a policy suggestion, it's a rhetorical device.
| If you pick a person in poverty, and give them a million
| dollars, they'll probably escape poverty and probably go
| on to live a prosperous life because poverty is caused by
| money, not education. Education helps people escape
| poverty because education can be used to earn money, not
| because _knowing how to open a bank account_ is the path
| to salvation. There are lots of smart and well educated
| and successful people who are terrible with money but
| never end up in poverty because they have enough money to
| absorb the mistakes.
| jimbokun wrote:
| The rhetorical device is worthless in my opinion, we need
| to implement workable policy suggestions that solve real
| problems.
| erikerikson wrote:
| And yet, a significantly frequent outcome of winning the
| lottery is bankruptcy.
| kneebonian wrote:
| > Give every person in poverty a million dollars, and many
| will escape poverty and go on to live very prosperous lives
| -- no education needed.
|
| If this were true many lottery winners would have their
| lives and their children's lives changed forever after
| winning. As it stands almost every person who wins the
| lottery ends up in the same place they were before within
| 10 years.
|
| The skills required to get out of poverty are often the
| skills required to stay out of poverty.
| phphphphp wrote:
| The "all lottery winners end up broke" meme is just that,
| a meme. Likewise, the idea that the lottery is a tax on
| those who are stupid or in poverty is a meme. There's
| lots of people who participate in (and win) lotteries who
| are living very comfortable lives, certainly not in
| poverty. Yes, many people who end up with money will go
| on to lose it (whether inherited or from a lottery or a
| lawsuit or some other means) but that's not unique to
| those in poverty. As I said, generational wealth is the
| perfect example of this: many _rich and successful_
| families will lose their wealth within a few generations.
| Losing money is an activity enjoyed by rich and poor
| alike.
| coryrc wrote:
| GP: Basic things like figuring out how to get a bank
| account open vs paying a check cashing fee, things add up
| quickly.
|
| You: Many people just want to live a life, they don't want
| to pursue greatness at all costs.
|
| These things are incongruous.
|
| Separately, in the US you only need two factors to predict
| poverty: did you graduate high school and did you wait for
| marriage to have children. For the vast majority of people,
| it's their culture that determines if those are valued. You
| need to change culture to change those, and people are
| suspect of having the government do that because of past
| and ongoing mistakes.
| phphphphp wrote:
| The GP suggested that the reason immigrants have
| succeeded is because they knew to learn to open a bank
| account, ergo, if people in poverty wanted to learn to
| open a bank account then they would escape poverty. My
| point is that is _not_ the reason immigrants are so often
| successful: rather, immigrants succeed because their
| entire life is built around seeking out something better
| for themselves and their family, and they 're taking
| risks and making sacrifices to get it. Education is a
| means to an end for immigrants looking to build a better
| life for themselves, it's not the reason they've
| succeeded. Many immigrants succeed without education!
|
| What predicts high school graduation? The framing of your
| comment ("did you graduate..." "did you wait for
| marriage...") suggests that these are choices made by
| people which determine whether they'll go on to live in
| poverty and if they just stayed in school and just didn't
| have kids then their lives would be great. The problem
| is, poverty does not start with the individual, in fact,
| it can be traced to before the person was born. High
| school graduation rates can be predicted based on the
| circumstance the child was born into.
| coryrc wrote:
| > if they just stayed in school and just didn't have kids
| then their lives would be great
|
| Yes, that's literally what they need to do. If we want to
| change that, then changing their culture to value
| education is the only way to do it. No culture which
| denigrates education is going to equip the majority of
| its adherents for the modern world.
|
| Edit: I feel you're saying the same thing. Said poor
| immigrants succeed because they value succeeding. That's
| culture.
| clnq wrote:
| That's good to hear. I didn't mean to be indignant, I just
| don't have a nuanced understanding of this. So thanks for the
| insights.
| pydry wrote:
| Very often if you diff "poor successful immigrant" stories to
| the stories of poor people who grew up in the same city, the
| key difference was they relied on bonds of trust between them
| and other immigrants from their country that helped give them
| a leg up.
|
| I was pretty shocked to discover that one of my friends (2nd
| gen asian immigrant in amsterdam) had parents who even tapped
| large interest free loans, and that the community largely
| expected this kind of help to be given freely.
|
| >I find it off for poverty-advocates to get indignant when
| poverty education comes up
|
| Yeah, coz it's well known to be ineffective (by design,
| pretty much), and is almost universally used by banks and
| politicians fronting for banks to try and get the heat off
| their backs and let them keep raking in profits unimpeded.
|
| Stuff like interest rate caps and banning payday lending, on
| the other hand, is very effective but impedes profits. The
| goal of corporate lobbyists is to present solutions (usually
| faux) that appear genuine but don't impede profits.
| O__________O wrote:
| As a single counter experience, I have repeatedly witnessed
| established immigrants exploit new immigrants from the same
| cultural backgrounds. Yes, some people get lucky and find
| meaningfully help, but others don't.
| pydry wrote:
| Of course. Rags to riches and "pulling oneself up by
| one's bootstraps" anecdotes are mired in survivorship
| bias almost by definition.
| troupe wrote:
| Some of the organizations I've seen in the US to provide
| "life coaching" for people in poverty are trying to create
| those types of relationships. Their logic is that the
| culture surrounding people in poverty tends to make it
| harder to do the types of things that would help them get
| out of poverty.
| xyzelement wrote:
| // Yeah, coz it's well known to be ineffective
|
| Hmm, the argument I always hear is "the poor don't need to
| be taught, they need (some short term thing that won't
| scale)"
|
| If you want to argue the effectiveness of various education
| methods, I am not down to that level of nuance. Obviously
| if the education is ineffective, that's a problem, it's
| still necessary.
| bko wrote:
| Lower socioeconomic class stay in the neighborhood that
| they grew up in and are much more likely to be close to
| parents and siblings. This is a much stronger network than
| some immigrant community of strangers based on country of
| origin.
|
| And if the benefits of networks based on country of origin
| were so powerful you'd expect places with a large percent
| of South American or Caribbean countries to be wealthy. But
| if you look at small Haitian or Dominican you don't see the
| same kind of upward mobility compared to asian
| neighborhoods.
| pydry wrote:
| >Lower socioeconomic class stay in the neighborhood that
| they grew up in and are much more likely to be close to
| parents and siblings. This is a much stronger network
| than some immigrant community of strangers based on
| country of origin.
|
| Are you equating the economic potential of being able to
| tap a large interest free loan from your community and
| having an equally poor sibling?
| bko wrote:
| I'm an immigrant to the US. My parents had a network of
| people from the same country (European). It was a good
| resource of friends and babysitting for my parents, but i
| never heard of anyone giving large interest free loans to
| a poor stranger just because they came from the same
| country. But maybe that's the norm for asian communities.
|
| Btw i wouldn't discount free childcare and is honestly
| worth more than an interest free loan. If you can help
| share childcare you can work many more hours
| O__________O wrote:
| Forget the name for it, but there is community based loan
| concept where everyone pitches in a little money to give
| one individual a loan based on luck of the draw with the
| pretext that in future prior past contributors have
| better odds of winning.
|
| Needless to say, frequently is a scam.
|
| EDIT: Here are examples:
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=site:wikipedia.org+inform
| al+...
| kortilla wrote:
| Banks don't conduct payday loans and make very little from
| the poor. The payday loan industry != banking industry.
| Bootvis wrote:
| In the case of the Netherlands, interest rate caps are
| already in place and payday loans don't exist. Furthermore,
| it's relatively easy to get help (but not fun) when you're
| bankrupt and to get out of this bankruptcy with a clean
| sheet after 5 years. Currently there is a law in the works
| vetted by the House of Representative to reduce this
| period.
| pydry wrote:
| Perhaps not but the Netherlands has _ridiculous_ levels
| of wealth inequality. On paper it 's worse than the US.
| CalRobert wrote:
| All the same I would much, much, MUCH rather be poor in
| the Netherlands than the US. Just not having to operate a
| car would save tons.
|
| Also, not sure but this comment may be a reference to:
|
| How The Dutch Economy Shows We Can't Reduce Wealth
| Inequality With Taxes | Economics Explained
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot4qdCs54ZE
|
| and if you watch that it's well worth watching this Dutch
| economist's rebuttal
|
| The Dutch Economy is NOT the Most Unequal
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW_kw6OPXc0
| Bootvis wrote:
| You have never been to the Netherlands, have you? Because
| those statistics you hint at are misleading at best.
| dangwhy wrote:
| > You have never been to the Netherlands, have you?
|
| How does merely visiting Netherlands tell a person that
| inequality stats are misleading ?
| Bootvis wrote:
| You walk around and see how people live and that the
| difference between the worst neighborhoods is much
| smaller than the US or even France. Another data point is
| that you will also see relatively little homeless people
| (compared to San Francisco for example).
| pydry wrote:
| I alluded to the figure not being the whole story by
| saying "on paper". Perhaps you skimmed that part.
| Nonetheless not the whole story is miles away from "not a
| problem". It IS a problem.
|
| I actually lived there for a period, not that it's
| relevant.
| Bootvis wrote:
| By omitting the rest of the story what remained 'on
| paper' became false. That was my point.
| dstick wrote:
| Well it's sorta true, but the important difference is
| that the bottom poverty line is higher than in the US,
| and we do have better social security. Still, the gap is
| growing. Though recent changes in real-estate legislation
| are putting a stop to that. Yes, there are the mega rich,
| entrepreneurs and whatnot. Like it or not, they do
| participate in society in a way that moves the needle.
|
| Means for the slightly-better-off middle class to exploit
| the lower class through rent are being thwarted,
| thankfully. They just allow one half of the population to
| exploit the other half without providing any tangible
| benefit in return.
|
| Source: I'm born in, and living in, the Netherlands.
| Bootvis wrote:
| No, the statement is mostly false. The famous Economics
| Explained video is debunked. Of course, there is
| inequality and maybe it is too much but is not of a
| ridiculous level compared to the rest of the world.
| Manfred wrote:
| These coaches are usually people who come from the same
| families and neighborhoods that face these kinds of problems.
| Help with navigating government programs and simple tips and
| tricks with finances can make a huge difference.
| hnhamdani wrote:
| I think this is more of the case. I used to live around the
| described neighborhood. It was an area with a notorious
| reputation as 'ghetto' where certain ethnic of immigrants
| live.
|
| I personally have no problem other than the casual nuisance
| and I have positive experience overall during my stay over
| there for a couple of years.
|
| The founder of the supermarket/umbrella foundation seems to
| have the similar background as the people live in the area.
| Thus, I think he has insight on what the community needs and
| how to help them.
| jvm___ wrote:
| Have you tried not being poor?
|
| Life coach is dependent on the opportunities available to that
| family, otherwise the life coach might just be left with
| cutting the only entertainment or treat food the people buy to
| alleviate some of their daily stress.
| asdff wrote:
| Life coaching could mean things like, here's how to open a
| bank account, here's how to navigate all the low income
| programs offered by the government, here's how to enroll in
| community college or a trade school, here's a local code
| bootcamp, here are the local food pantrys and their hours,
| here is a low cost daycare option, etc. All the things middle
| class people take for granted because its either irrelevant
| to them, or their parents who already understand these
| systems help them figure it all out.
| phphphphp wrote:
| I completely agree with your skepticism but based on the
| description of the service I expect it to land on the good
| side.
|
| The problem with a lot of poverty focused charity is that it
| is, essentially, a payment to a vulnerable person to be
| dehumanised. Fortunately, that means we can assess a poverty
| charity easily: do they humanise the people receiving help?
| Allowing people to come into a store and shop and engage with
| bespoke support is very humanising, because it's just removing
| money from the equation, it does not take away agency or trust.
| The support they're offering is not one size fits all, or a
| jobs-pipeline, rather, it's whatever the customers need help
| with -- essentially, what someone with money pays for!
|
| There's certainly the possibility that even a well designed
| service can become a karma-mill for the middle-class, but in
| this case, I think we can be quite optimistic.
|
| That said, "life coach" has terrible connotations in the US but
| I think that's just something lost in translation.
| kvdveer wrote:
| In a vacuum, i'd be inclined to agree with you. However, this
| is not rich people telling poor people to stop being poor. This
| exists in a extensive web of social organizations that work
| together to solve poverty at the root cause.
|
| I can't vouch for this specific organization, but i'm very
| familiar with similar organizations. This kind of organization
| runs on volunteers, many of whom have experienced poverty
| firsthand, and virtually all have experienced poverty
| secondhand. This kind of volunteer work is typically people
| actually caring, not people 'virtue-signaling'. This kind of
| work is done in intimate collaboration with municipal social
| services, which are typically well-respected in the
| Netherlands.
|
| There is no doubt in my mind that everyone involved is
| intending and capable of affecting a change for good.
|
| > I wonder how effective life coaching is to people in poverty.
|
| I've personally volunteered as a coach in poverty situations.
| It works. The coach doesn't need to do much, just listen to the
| problems people cope with, and occasionally point them towards
| a resource that'll help them is enough. Just being able to vent
| to someone who knows how it feels to deal with poverty might be
| enough. If it's not, helping people navigate social services
| and programmes typically ends up lifting them from poverty.
|
| It helps that in the Netherlands, poverty is typically
| unnecessary. There is (almost) guaranteed livable income for
| everyone independent of employment, due to our strong social
| security system.
| alright_scowl wrote:
| > It helps that in the Netherlands, poverty is typically
| unnecessary. There is (almost) guaranteed livable income for
| everyone independent of employment, due to our strong social
| security system.
|
| I lived in multiple countries, including the Netherlands.
|
| Living there substantially changed how I view subjects such
| as taxation and social security. Taxes were high, but the
| benefits a strong social security brings to the place are
| great.
|
| Not saying that there's no waste, things that could be
| improved, etc. But in comparison to the other places I lived,
| the Dutch were way ahead of the curve.
| ravenstine wrote:
| It's tricky because maybe life coaching doesn't work for most
| of those in poverty but is good to have for the minority who
| respond to it.
| [deleted]
| rbanffy wrote:
| It's a nice reminder that everybody wins when nobody loses. Life
| isn't a zero sum game.
| ljf wrote:
| So many people seem to forget that - helping those with the
| least, helps us all. From a purely mercenary point of view, it
| helps build you more customers and more skilled workers.
| newsclues wrote:
| Poverty is costly, and if your region has a social safety net
| that includes healthcare, thus resolving poverty will save
| tax payers in the long run.
|
| But from the mercenary point of view, I think reducing
| poverty is worth it from a security and quality of life point
| of view. If public spaces are dangerous that is no good for
| people and poverty also degrades peoples quality of life,
| examples like not having to step over homeless people outside
| your front door don't really have dollar values, but they
| make people happier.
| mr_00ff00 wrote:
| This might ignite a fight in the comments, but it's a
| genuine question.
|
| (As an American) when I think of places that fight crime
| primarily with welfare (aka the idea better policing
| doesn't work, equality will fix it), I think of San
| Francisco and Seattle which have crazy homeless and crime
| problems.
|
| However, it seems to me like in Europe, plenty of places
| seem to do this and see positive results.
|
| What's the difference? Why is the welfare city of San
| Francisco terrible but the welfare city of
| Amsterdam/Stockholm/etc seem to be fine?
| newsclues wrote:
| Is the goal of policy profit, or to fix a problem?
|
| I am in Canada, so we have a blend of American, and
| European society, and it seems that when people want to
| extract money from the community, the problem isn't
| resolved. I see this in the homeless/drug space from
| activist organizations who are extracting lots of money
| from government, but are not doing a good job of solving
| problems, as that would end the flood of money.
| vasco wrote:
| My guess is it comes from drug related policies,
| education, culture and enforcement. The USA is the
| developed country with the highest per-capita rates of
| alcohol & drug use disorders and drug related deaths. I
| believe this is due to the geography and high purchasing
| power of americans, not due to any flaws in character.
| You're in a place it's easy to get drugs into, and people
| earn enough to buy them. This then creates a mental
| health and drug epidemic which are the true cause of most
| homelessness in the cities you reference, as opposed to
| purely being lack of money, job or housing, though these
| problems are obviously not mutually exclusive.
| The_Double wrote:
| The problem for san Francisco is that they just attract
| more homeless whenever they try to help them. You can not
| solve poverty in a single city with open borders, you
| need to solve it for the whole state/country. Especially
| if the city has a temperate climate that attracts
| homeless anyway.
|
| As an aside: The big cities in the Netherlands also have
| some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country. If you
| pick a random smaller town/city it is likely to have less
| poverty than Amsterdam, (but also less wealthy
| residents).
| vasco wrote:
| > examples like not having to step over homeless people
| outside your front door don't really have dollar values
|
| Not trying to be crass but that's literally reflected in
| the real estate prices. Homes in areas with lots of
| homelessness and related crime in the area will have lower
| prices than equivalent homes somewhere else. It does have a
| dollar value.
| pipodeclown wrote:
| Sure... You could also reframe it as the cost of building
| a big gate around your low homelessness neighborhood to
| keep the homeless out and to have security personelle to
| boot them out of the neighberhoud if they do get in...
| newsclues wrote:
| Sure, everything has a dollar value if you drill down far
| enough.
|
| But it's not extra money in your pocket if you don't sell
| your property.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Absolutely.
|
| The political reason for the Dutch social safety: stop an
| impending socialist/communist revolution. This was a real
| threat in Europe at the time. A second reason was scientific:
| poor people were spreading diseases which are a threat for
| everyone. A third reason was economic: healthy and happy
| people work harder.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| You also just build a nicer world to live in. The mere
| concept of a "gated community" is bizarre and dystopian.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| At the macro level, a country's immigration controls are
| the gates for that community and at a micro level, the
| locked doors/gates to a house or property are the gates.
|
| At which level they should or should not exist is dependent
| on many parameters, but I would not classify it as bizarre.
|
| People in the US are fortunate enough to have so much space
| that many times distances themselves serve as the gate, but
| if you live in a more dense society, perhaps a controlled
| border is necessary for some purpose.
|
| It is dystopian though, I imagine it is a direct
| representation of lack of trust between the members in
| society, and likely related to the size of wealth gaps.
| kortilla wrote:
| > The mere concept of a "gated community" is bizarre and
| dystopian.
|
| Oh? Well how easy is it for a poor person from India to
| move to the Netherlands to take advantage of this?
| WildGreenLeave wrote:
| We have a lot of expats from India, mostly software
| engineering. They are being picked based on their skills.
| Income/background does not have anything to do with this,
| even more so, I think that using that kind of information
| is even illegal here.
|
| That being said, there is a different argument to be
| made. The Netherlands does not have a lot of private
| schools, and private schools generally tend to not be
| more exclusive than regular schools. This means that an
| applicant that went to private school _might_ have an
| advantage but generally you can go to any school and
| there will be plenty of decent paying jobs or chances for
| you. Along with that, every person in The Netherlands is
| able to go and study. Either you take out a (compared to
| the US, small) loan and even that is being reverted to a
| gift from the government or you work along side to it. I
| am quite sure that this is not the case in India and
| therefore a poor person will have less of a chance then a
| rich person. But this is unrelated to the companies
| hiring and it is purely related to your study.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| When you say "They are being picked", do you mean that
| they are being picked for immigration purposes?
|
| The point of the parent is that it is hard for a random
| Indian to immigrate to the Netherlands, that they must
| show some skill or ability in order to gain entry.
|
| The argument is that the Netherlands can afford their
| social net because they do not have an endless stream of
| people coming asking for benefits. So by limiting the
| amount of immigration, the Netherlands is acting like a
| gated community.
|
| A further argument along these lines would be, if you do
| not feel that the Netherlands is acting as a gated
| community. Should the Netherlands open it's social
| programs to people not in the Netherlands? i.e. Should
| Americans or Mexicans be allowed to apply and receive
| benefits from the Netherlands even though they have no
| tie to the Netherlands?
| WildGreenLeave wrote:
| When I say "they are being picked" I mean they are being
| picked by the company based on their skills. Regardless
| of immigration.
|
| From a cultural standpoint I wouldn't want to open up
| further, from a purely theoretical standpoint I would
| have no problem opening up our social programs to outside
| the Netherlands _if_ the additional group (regardless of
| it being a group, country, province, state, whatever)
| pays the same amount of tax as we do. But good luck
| implementing that, income tax for India is max 30%,
| compare that to our lowest bracket which is already 37%
| and goes up to 50%.
| kortilla wrote:
| You're missing the point. The people that would apply
| would happily pay the increased tax rate because their
| annual income is going to be <20k euros and they'll
| receive far more in benefits.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| And that 37-50 percent is just what is necessary to
| sustain the people already on benefits there, in that
| geographical location.
|
| If you throw in people that live in
| earthquake/typhoon/volcanic/etc locales, with different
| diseases and food production, natural resources, climate,
| and scale up the population of people to administer all
| those benefits by a couple orders of magnitude, you can
| bet you'll be paying a lot more in taxes to try to afford
| the same quality of life for everyone.
| tomp wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the Netherlands is a "gated community".
|
| Every EU country is.
|
| At current technology levels, it's simply impossible to
| have a "social net" (i.e. guaranteeing every citizen enough
| resources for a minimum standard of living) and open
| borders (i.e. infinite demand for said resources)
| [deleted]
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| one could argue that struggling families are families that for
| one reason or another are not fit enough for their current
| environment, whereby by assisting them you are gradually
| lowering the fitness of the entire population, therefore
| everybody loses.
|
| now of course I am not claiming that this is true, nobody can
| know, and I'd much rather we helped eachother than not, but
| there's certainly an argument to be made.
| joseph_grobbles wrote:
| [dead]
| techdmn wrote:
| Many years ago, I worked as a short order cook at a chain
| restaurant. The economy was doing quite well, and
| unemployment was low. This was actually a real problem for
| us, because we couldn't hire dishwashers. Turns out nobody
| wants to do a shit job for shit pay when alternatives exist.
|
| A perhaps generous view of how the Federal Reserve manages
| our economy is to avoid inflation. A less generous view might
| be that they aim to keep unemployment high enough that
| workers are desperate enough to accept shit jobs, and that
| wages don't take too large a slice of the pie. Obviously this
| requires less than full employment, such that they actually
| define full employment as "the highest level of employment
| that is consistent with price stability".
|
| In other words, one output of the way our economy is managed
| is that some people are desperate. At that point you're
| simply stack-ranking people, and claiming that the bottom
| 3-4% deserve to be desperate regardless of actual fitness.
| (Never mind that we don't have anything close to a
| meritocracy.)
| kortilla wrote:
| The fed has a dual policy mandate. You forgot the second
| half.
| [deleted]
| gruez wrote:
| >A perhaps generous view of how the Federal Reserve manages
| our economy is to avoid inflation. A less generous view
| might be that they aim to keep unemployment high enough
| that workers are desperate enough to accept shit jobs, and
| that wages don't take too large a slice of the pie.
| Obviously this requires less than full employment, such
| that they actually define full employment as "the highest
| level of employment that is consistent with price
| stability".
|
| There's no need to make insinuations that the fed is
| conspiring to oppress workers when their mandate (as
| defined by congress) is to both have maximum employment and
| to avoid inflation.
|
| "The Federal Reserve Act mandates that the Federal Reserve
| conduct monetary policy "so as to promote effectively the
| goals of maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate
| long-term interest rates."
|
| https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/monetary-
| polic...
|
| >In other words, one output of the way our economy is
| managed is that some people are desperate. At that point
| you're simply stack-ranking people, and claiming that the
| bottom 3-4% deserve to be desperate regardless of actual
| fitness. (Never mind that we don't have anything close to a
| meritocracy.)
|
| Contrary to what you might think, "full employment" doesn't
| mean 0% unemployment. There are many reasons why you don't
| want 0% unemployment[1]. Therefore the fed targeting 3-4%
| unemployment (or whatever they think "full employment" is,
| isn't some sort of plot for "stack-ranking people".
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_employment
| actionfromafar wrote:
| For as long as we have been humans, we have also changed
| current environment. Accepting Mad Max as the outcome to
| breed for, one could also argue, sucks.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Is it worth making this specific argument if you don't think
| it's true ?
|
| Otherwise, we're in societies that evolve at crazy paces,
| some parts of our lives 5 generations ago were radically
| different from our lives now, while other groups almost
| didn't change. I don't see the concept of "fitness" to be
| relevant to our current situation where we have no idea of
| what's coming up even in 50 years. In times of uncertainty,
| diversity is a better bet than trying to optimize for a
| status quo.
| troupe wrote:
| From what I've seen of families in poverty, it is usually
| less about them fitting into the current environment and more
| an issue of them having a surrounding culture that makes it
| hard to take advantage of the current environment.
|
| A simple example is that people in a poverty culture tend to
| spend money immediately on short term gratification. On one
| hand, we could assume this is because they are foolish, but
| many have experience that if they try to save $20 for
| something longer term, someone in their household will end up
| just taking the money for something else. So their are acting
| rationally by trying to convert that $20 to something that
| will bring pleasure to them rather than deferring the
| pleasure only to lose the ability to spend the $20 on
| something they would enjoy.
| asdff wrote:
| Citations are of course needed, since I find the idea that
| most poor families have this pot of money anyone in the
| household can loot kind of bizarre. In the end, can you
| really blame a poor person for spending $3 on gatorade
| instead of water? That $2 price difference might amount to
| 0.1% of their monthly rent. You probably feel a lot happier
| at the end of the month eating a variety of things versus
| rice beans and water day in and out until you die, and the
| overall financial outcomes would probably be the exact same
| since no one is getting out of poverty through cutting out
| snacks and tasty things. They get out when their job
| changes and they are paid substantially more than the
| difference between buying a sandwich and making your own
| would be.
| greedo wrote:
| Modern society isn't some Mendelian pea experiment. And using
| the "one could argue" trope is really not helpful and could
| be construed as incendiary...
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| How is laying down an opposing view that I don't
| necessarily support and using "one could argue" incendiary
| ?
|
| Don't you think there's value in playing the devil's
| advocate, just for the sake of the argument ?
| paulmd wrote:
| > How is laying down an opposing view that I don't
| necessarily support and using "one could argue"
| incendiary ?
|
| because it's fundamentally bad-faith argumentation and
| when it's used to argue that people don't deserve to
| live, people find that adversarial and an attack on their
| existence.
|
| > Don't you think there's value in playing the devil's
| advocate, just for the sake of the argument ?
|
| look, you're not arguing about the color of the bikeshed
| here, are you?
|
| I think you'll find there's certain viewpoints that we
| don't want people even "hypothetically" (not really, the
| whole point of the devil's advocate is that you
| inherently feel that it has some merit worth) advocating
| for. People find it real offensive if you argue that they
| don't deserve to live, and in this case that includes
| disadvantaged people who are barely scraping by.
|
| it is (or can be used as) a coward's way to argue for
| something that you think holds some merit but you don't
| actually want to attach your name to, and when the
| argument itself is adversarial/antagonistic or genocidal
| we should generally not be encouraging that even in a
| "hypothetical" (again, not really) sense, no.
|
| And when you are basically arguing "poor people need to
| be cut off from their safety net" etc that does reach
| towards the genocidal things - everyone knows what
| happens next when people on the edge of survival are cut
| off from their remaining resources. It's arguing they as
| a class don't deserve to survive.
|
| Like gosh "I said it was hypothetical, it's a devil's
| advocate, what are you even mad about???" is such a HN
| perspective.
| jackothy wrote:
| It is not fundamentally bad-faith when he presents the
| argument honestly. He makes no sign that he isn't willing
| to discuss the argument purely on its merits. His comment
| could set us up for a healthy discussion on why one
| should (not) hold that specific opinion.
|
| If one does not already know of any bullet proof counter
| argument, then presenting a "hypothetical" (devil's
| advocate) argument is extremely helpful to investigate
| _why_ that argument is in fact wrong (or the
| "hypothetical" might even be correct. How can you know if
| you don't investigate the counter arguments?)
|
| Refusing to engage with an argument because it is
| "dangerous" leads to no deeper understanding whatsoever.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| well, I disagree. I think that entertaining the argument
| will not turn civilised people into your rendition of the
| devil, and I think that nothing should be out of bounds
| for discussion.
|
| I could not argue for letting people suffer and not
| helping them, I'm not a lunatic. Would the argument that
| they are unfit for current conditions hold some merit ?
| Perhaps. I cannot know, and neither can you. It is a far
| too complex topic to firmly attest an opinion on,
| especially with our limited current knowledge. Is that an
| extra reason that this makes it an interesting topic to
| discuss ? I think so.
|
| The extrapolation to genocide from a simple discussion is
| akin to calling everyone with different opinions a nazi.
| It's plain silly.
| kevviiinn wrote:
| >I could not argue for letting people suffer and not
| helping them
|
| But that's literally what you did in your top comment
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| I did not, you should re-read my top comment.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| Two counterpoints:
|
| A.
|
| The sum total of all humans alive at moment X are fit to be
| alive at X and have an equal fitness of survival.
|
| Divergence occurs when we talk about probability of surviving
| in future time frame Y. Even so, criteria that defines
| current and future fittest in "survival of fittest" can be
| many things. Dinosaurs roamed the earth, but mice survived
| whatever killed the huge, strong lizards.
|
| B.
|
| A society that does not care for its least might find that
| its least are not loyal. This can have security implications,
| especially when bordered by unfriendly states.
| landoftheice wrote:
| [dead]
| l33t233372 wrote:
| This seems like an argument in favor of social darwinism -- a
| school of thought that has been (and still is, with any
| amount of thought) thoroughly debunked.
| asdff wrote:
| This of course makes the assumption that the current
| environment is any good. Sometimes the current environment is
| quite bad and hostile to most people. If you are in the artic
| circle, its probably more realistic to survive being given
| some warm clothing, than to strip down naked and march
| thousands of miles to the equator where the environment suits
| your (lack of) clothing.
|
| The latter is not generally what we do as humans, only when
| all other means of survival fail do we migrate. We have the
| ability to use technology to adapt to our environments, such
| as in making clothing, and even change the environments, like
| making a warm dwelling or lighting a fire. These are within
| our toolsets for survival so we should use them, versus
| moving to where we happen to find adaption without these
| abilities.
| kazinator wrote:
| Things that wouldn't work in America, #47.
| shdon wrote:
| Dang, gotta find out how to donate to this.
| tinco wrote:
| You can donate here: https://studiezalen.com/doneren/
|
| They have raised 250.000 to fund this supermarket. Beyond the
| fact that a notable newspaper reported on it (Parool) I can't
| vouch for it other than that link really is their donation
| page.
| kvdveer wrote:
| Here you go: https://studiezalen.com/doneren/. That's the
| donation page for the organization that's making this happen.
| They focus primarily on education, and found out that
| undernourishment or the threat thereof is really detrimental
| for education. That's why they started this project.
|
| Alternatively you could move to Amsterdam or Zaandam and pay
| your taxes. This kind of organization lives off government
| subsidies, donations are just an extra. Last year their total
| income was 2.1 million euros, although they do not specify how
| much of that is from donations.
|
| Here's their annual financial report (extended report available
| through their contact form): https://studiezalen.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2022/10/publicati... Here's their annual non-
| financial report (i.e. formal newsletter):
| https://studiezalen.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Jaarversl...
| All of these are in Dutch.
| jmyeet wrote:
| It is nice to see things like this but we shouldn't forget that
| we can't charity our way our of systemic problems.
|
| Example: the recent MrBeast video where he restored sight to 1000
| people [1]. Really, this should make you angry at a system that
| allows people to be virtually blind when fixing it is so cheap.
| It makes no sense from an economic standpoint. People who can see
| can be way more productive (let alone all the personal benefits
| of course). But we don't do that. Why? To protect private health
| care profits.
|
| There is absolutely enough food and shelther available on this
| planet for every man, woman and child to have a roof over their
| heads and enough to eat. It is a choice to deny it to them. Why?
| So a handful of people can become obscenely wealthy. That's it.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJ2ifmkGGus
| xyzelement wrote:
| There's a chicken and the egg problem here.
|
| The reason our country/world has so many resources, is because
| people with a commercial interest worked had to develop/build
| it. Like, our medicine is amazing because there historically
| has been so much money in it, which attracted talent and
| research dollars.
|
| So it's easy to look at that and say "oh wow we have so much,
| how can we not be giving it away for free" but that misses the
| point that with that mindset, we wouldn't have built what we
| have to begin with.
|
| People often fail to understand that it's a balance.
| jmyeet wrote:
| This is what we call the Myth of the Profit Motive that
| underpins a lot of capitalist propaganda. The myth here is
| that nothing happens without the profit motive.
|
| Another commenter mentioned insulin. Despite insulin being
| invented 100 years ago and the IP being given away for $1 to
| benefit people, we're still paying outrageous prices for
| insulin in the USofA even with supposedly limited patent
| life. The system has been successfully gamed and government
| bought so that people can be charged $1000/month for
| something necessary to live that costs a fraction of that to
| produce.
|
| A lot of pharma is like this: pharmaceutical companies
| primarily spend on marketing and lobbying. A huge chunk of
| the so-called innovation actually happens with Federally
| funded research in universities that we just give away to a
| company to profit from.
|
| If you accept that "our medicine is amazing", what about
| pretty much every other developed nation giving universal
| access to health care? Our outcomes (eg life expectacy) are
| generally worse because we restrict access only to those with
| money.
| xyzelement wrote:
| // This is what we call the Myth of the Profit Motive that
| underpins a lot of capitalist propaganda
|
| Comrade, I am curious - what is the economic system of the
| country you live in? And if it's not socialist, why have
| you not migrated to one of the existing socialist
| paradises?
|
| I ask this as someone whose family made the move in the
| other direction. Life in capitalism is better empirically
| than the alternatives, it's not propaganda for millions of
| us who experienced it both ways.
|
| // Our outcomes (eg life expectacy) are generally worse
| because we restrict access only to those with money.
|
| Is that true and is it accurate to compare say Sweden which
| is a small, uniform country (everyone is an in-shape middle
| class white guy) to the US which is vast and diverse in
| every way?
| ryandrake wrote:
| You don't have to go to that extreme. The Myth also says
| that with _less_ profit motive, less would happen. But,
| is that really true? If a profitable corporation has to
| pay a little more in taxes, and thus becomes slightly
| less profitable, will shareholders simply decide to "Go
| Galt," close the business, and stop making that delicious
| profit? I don't think so. If I was a business owner, and
| I had to go from making "great profit" to "good profit"
| I'm still thrilled because I'm profiting. I'm not going
| to take my ball and go home.
|
| Businesses close when they make no profit, or when
| there's not a market fit, or for many other non-tax-
| related reasons. I've never heard of a business failing
| simply because their taxes were too darn high.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| You are ignoring that the net profit has to be
| sufficiently high to offset risk in the financial
| calculation. Expected ROI calculations are always net of
| taxes, inflation, and risk. Many businesses that look
| "profitable" on paper are uninvestable due to inflation
| and risk, so reducing realized net profits pushes more
| businesses into this category.
|
| There absolutely is a level of positive profit below
| which it makes more financial sense for investors to sit
| on their money.
|
| Governments are aware of this and set their taxation
| policies accordingly. That is why long-term capital gains
| usually have a relatively low tax rates. There is a high
| drag on expected ROI due to inflation and risk that makes
| many of those investments unattractive ceteris paribus.
| Kalium wrote:
| To be clear, shareholders do routinely pull their money
| from companies they believe are underperforming. This is
| what's happening when a stock price drops or bond rate
| climbs after a company's earnings fall short of
| expectations. Investors are generally not equally
| thrilled with a mediocre profit instead of a great profit
| because any profit is delicious.
|
| Do they "Go Galt"? No, but their money often goes
| somewhere else. A different company, a hedge fund, or
| even a different country are all options used quite
| regularly. Taking their ball and going to play somewhere
| else with some other people is always an option. Tax
| policy can and does influence this.
| gruez wrote:
| > This is what we call the Myth of the Profit Motive that
| underpins a lot of capitalist propaganda. The myth here is
| that nothing happens without the profit motive.
|
| The strawman here is that capitalist ideology requires
| "nothing happens without the profit motive" to work. It
| doesn't. Take food for instance. There's no doubt that
| there are altruists willing to feed people for free (eg.
| soup kitchens/food banks), but you can't rely on altruists
| to feed the world. The point of capitalism is that you
| don't need to rely on people's charity to get fed, or
| whatever other products/services you want. As Adam Smith
| puts it:
|
| "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer,
| or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their
| regard to their own interest. "
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Another commenter mentioned insulin. Despite insulin
| being invented 100 years ago and the IP being given away
| for $1 to benefit people, we're still paying outrageous
| prices for insulin in the USofA even with supposedly
| limited patent life.
|
| No, you are not. Out of patent insulin is cheap. Newer, far
| more effective patented insulin is expensive. Insulin makes
| for great clickbait, because the average person does not
| understand there are many different kinds at different
| prices.
|
| Where is the incentive for a business to research better
| insulin?
|
| And no one is stopping US taxpayers from voting for US
| politicians to pay for R&D of insulin (and other
| medications) so that it is in the public domain and can be
| produced and sold as cheaply as possible.
| SamoyedFurFluff wrote:
| I don't actually know if we have stuff because of commercial
| motivations. The guys who discovered insulin didn't do so out
| of commercial desire. Neither did the people who figured out
| vaccinations. There are inventors who make money off of their
| inventions, but they are often poor salespeople and are
| mostly tinkerers.
| xyzelement wrote:
| These are fair points but they are individual rather than
| systematic. Was in the hospital with my mom a few weeks
| ago, in NYC. The amount of equipment, procedure, etc she
| received was orders of magnitude beyond that which she
| would have gotten in the USSR where she grew up, and most
| places today.
|
| For every piece of equipment, mobile bed, ekg, sensor,
| sample etc - here's a company that makes that stuff,
| efficiently and at scale. They are driven by the fact that
| hospitals buy this stuff, which is in part driven by the
| patients and insurance ability to pay. Money makes this
| stuff go round.
|
| And yes a homeless person walking into the ER gets a
| benefit out of all this stuff for free - but only because
| everyone else pays for them. If nobody paid for it, it
| wouldn't exist.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > There is absolutely enough food and shelther available on
| this planet for every man, woman and child to have a roof over
| their heads and enough to eat. It is a choice to deny it to
| them. Why?
|
| Because the dictators where a lot of desperately poor people
| live will use their militaries to control donated food and
| goods to increase their control over the people.
| jimbokun wrote:
| > Really, this should make you angry
|
| We are all angrier than at any time I can remember, and it's
| not accomplishing anything.
|
| We need to turn down the temperature of the rhetoric, and start
| implementing practical solutions, like what you describe.
| jmyeet wrote:
| > We are all angrier than at any time I can remember, and
| it's not accomplishing anything
|
| Because that anger is being directed towards culture war
| wedge issues. That's on purpose.
|
| > We need to turn down the temperature of the rhetoric ...
|
| I'm more concerned with the direction rather than the
| intensity.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Yes "as long as only everyone who agrees with me is angry,
| and no one else gets angry in response, everything will
| work out fine".
| akira2501 wrote:
| > It is a choice to deny it to them. Why?
|
| Because the choice to just give it to them will have
| consequences and will very likely fundamentally change the
| nature of the society we live in.
|
| > So a handful of people can become obscenely wealthy. That's
| it.
|
| That's one consequence. I highly doubt that would be the only
| one.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > There is absolutely enough food and shelther available on
| this planet for every man, woman and child to have a roof over
| their heads and enough to eat.
|
| Only on paper. Reality is not that simple. The problems are not
| solved with giving people food and shelter. Rich countries did
| that, they still do it, it solves nothing. People will stay
| hungry, and now they depend on it, and will also raise demand.
| In the past, we've seen horrible cases of charity destroying
| local economies, making people even more depending on charity.
| This can't be an answer for making the world a better place.
|
| We can do better, but not with a simplistic view. It will make
| things just worse.
| Kalium wrote:
| > There is absolutely enough food and shelther available on
| this planet for every man, woman and child to have a roof over
| their heads and enough to eat. It is a choice to deny it to
| them. Why? So a handful of people can become obscenely wealthy.
| That's it.
|
| Can we stop a second and talk about this? Morally and
| ethically, you are absolutely and completely right in every
| possible way. There's nothing at all to talk about.
|
| Yet food and shelter aren't just moral questions of basic
| humanity. They're also logistical questions. Having a warehouse
| of stored grain in Nebraska is useless to starving people in
| Indonesia without a way to get it there and a way to feed them
| for all the days to come. Having empty houses in Detroit is not
| useful to unsheltered people in Budapest without a way to get
| the latter to the former and enable them to actually live there
| - never mind if they would accept such an offer.
|
| You're absolutely right. These are moral and ethical non-
| questions. There just might be practical questions in there
| too. Ignoring the latter to focus on the former is perhaps not
| an ideal way to identify systemic changes that _can_ address
| systemic problems.
|
| Otherwise you wind up in a situation like San Francisco's,
| where people point to misleading numbers on vacant housing (and
| decry the abominable human greed) in order to distract from a
| decades-long failure to produce enough housing for people.
| lnsru wrote:
| But why Budapest? People are doing there fine. All ex soviet
| block countries are doing fine actually.
| Kalium wrote:
| Picked at random to serve as an example. Like most places
| you'll find it has some percentage of vulnerable and
| marginalized members of the community who are experiencing
| life as an unsheltered person. A quick search turns up this
| - https://www.homelessnessimpact.org/post/homelessness-and-
| the...
|
| I could just as easily have picked almost any major rich
| world city. A poorer one would similarly have a homeless
| population, but the point would be less clear.
| jiggywiggy wrote:
| Somehow the forced coaching feels patronizing.
| kvdveer wrote:
| There already is the 'voedselbank', which does roughly the same
| thing without the life coach. People can choose what will help
| them best.
| jiggywiggy wrote:
| Not really sure why the fact that other services exist make
| this service less patronizing.
|
| Basic assumption is, we know you need coaching, you probably
| won't take it, so we will bribe you with basic necessities.
|
| It might work or might not, but it's patronizing for sure.
| alright_scowl wrote:
| I think the basic assumption is "you need help, and we are
| willing to help you".
|
| I guess it all comes down to what "life coaching" means in
| this context. If we are talking about some sort of social
| assistants that will understand what ails the people in
| need and help them find a way around their issues (e.g.:
| navigate state bureaucracy, acquiring some basic
| qualification, find help with rehabilitation, etc) I see no
| downside.
|
| Instead of seeing this as patronizing, I actually see it as
| quite humane.
| akira2501 wrote:
| It's presumptive that any problem you might have could
| possibly be solved by a state paid "life coach." I'm sure
| there's a segment of the population that could use this,
| but likewise, I'm sure there's a segment of the
| population that's facing unique enough circumstances that
| a "life coach" would come off as a slap in the face.
| cushychicken wrote:
| I have a ton of admiration for Dutch society and their social
| safety net. They do a great job culturally of remembering to
| treat everyone in a very humane manner. I wish America was more
| like them in that regard.
| jiscariot wrote:
| Seems to me the US and Dutch societies have moved even further
| apart when it comes to social trust/social capital. e.g.
| Fukuyama's warned the US about in 1992's "Trust: The Social
| Virtues and The Creation of Prosperity" has happened.
|
| Everything gets easier, when you live in a high-trust society--
| unfortunately I don't think the US has been high-trust in quite
| some time. The bad part is that it takes generations to build
| and a decades to erode. My local bodega doesn't have free
| groceries, but rather a sign on the door prohibiting people
| from wearing ski masks, because groups were walking out with
| merchandise.
| [deleted]
| mr90210 wrote:
| It's ok to wish, but don't you forget that the Dutch government
| has to solve problems for only 17 million people whereas the
| American government has 333 million people to take care.
|
| Yes, America can learn from The Netherlands and other countries
| that are doing well, but it's also reasonable to acknowledge
| how hard the American problem is.
| hazzahzah wrote:
| to be fair, the american government also have a bigger budget
| to play with. It's more of a priority issue than a scale
| issue.
| mr90210 wrote:
| After thinking about such large challenges for a while,
| I've concluded that money alone isn't enough. Money solves
| money problems, too much money flowing in the wrong
| direction solves nothing.
| yadaeno wrote:
| +1 too much money flying around just causes inflation,
| since the underlying resources that the money is trying
| to allocate remain constrained.
|
| West coast US cities are a perfect example of this, not
| enough housing means labor resources are constrained
| which is the biggest input for actually getting things
| done (fixing problems, creating value, etc).
| Scotrix wrote:
| I think the issue is in regards to who is in charge of
| the money and what are their incentives.
|
| Overall I believe that free and good(!) basic education
| independent from status and location is a solution for
| many problems but it seems that as more capitalistic a
| system becomes as less incentive there is to actually
| educate and teach the population.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| It's not so much the size of the group, but the size of their
| problems and conflicts. USA is a very diversified country,
| with many different groups, cultures, interests and
| conflicts. Probably more than any other country in the world.
| mr90210 wrote:
| Exactly, America is unique in that sense. China, India,
| Brazil and Nigeria also have +100 million people, but they
| are far less diversified, nevertheless, they also struggle
| with challenges that come from massive scale.
|
| It's not easy.
| tchalla wrote:
| Oh yes, China/India/Brazil are "far less diversified".
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Maybe if the US didn't spend about $700 billion a year on its
| military, it might have money to take better care of its
| citizens.
|
| It's not that the US doesn't have the means. It's just clear
| that its priority is not improving the lives of Americans.
| cushychicken wrote:
| The US spends more of its budget on healthcare for its
| citizens than it does on its defense budget.
|
| As a person who works for a defense adjacent company, I can
| tell you confidently that government adjacent healthcare is
| the closest thing this country has to socialized medicine.
|
| I do agree that it doesn't seem to be a priority. I have to
| assume there's a bunch of slack and waste in the system
| given the amount of money that goes into it.
| Retric wrote:
| I don't get this argument. Government scales with population
| size just fine.
| sokoloff wrote:
| Government might scale, but people's willingness to give up
| their own resources to help someone else does not scale
| indefinitely. As an extreme example, I'm much more willing
| to help my immediate family than my extended family and I
| suspect the same is true for most people. That same
| property extends to being more willing to pay for my local
| schools than for struggling schools 1300 miles away in
| Mississippi or being more willing to pay for support for a
| homeless person that I can see and interact with than to
| pay that same amount for one hundreds or thousands of miles
| away.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| It's absurd to make this argument without acknowledging
| the vast scope of US geography and resources compared to
| the Netherlands.
| lozenge wrote:
| Where's the evidence this difference is specifically due
| to the population or "size" of the country rather than
| history, culture and any other factors? It's like you put
| two countries on a scatter plot and drew a line from
| them.
| hommelix wrote:
| The Netherlands have been flooded multiple times over the
| centuries and this has contributed to the idea of helping
| the people in difficult situation. I don't recall
| exactly, but after the flood of 1825, a fond was started
| to collect money to help the ones who lost everything.
| And a large part of the population contributed money into
| it as everyone knew a relative or friend who lost some
| property, his home, or some family members. So geography
| and history have a part in the way the Dutch care against
| adversity.
|
| Here is a list from English Wikipedia about the floods.
| The Dutch Wikipedia has much more info on the flood, as
| well as a museum in Leyden (from Rijkswaterstaat if I
| remember well). Not everyone can read the Dutch language.
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_floods_in_the_Net
| her...
| pipodeclown wrote:
| You could easily solve that by having
| social/redistributions measure on a municipality/state
| level... The Netherlands is also part of the EU, very
| little social welfare measures are effectuated through
| the EU, most of that happens on a state level.
| dml2135 wrote:
| If it's so easy to solve for, why hasn't it happened
| already?
| erentz wrote:
| One of the biggest issues that prevents this is that
| states cannot require residency requirements (e.g. must
| have lived in state for 2 years) as part of the criteria
| for access to such social safety nets.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shapiro_v._Thompson
| Zaiberia wrote:
| Because the US is no longer a full democracy, and the
| government mainly represents corporations rather than its
| citizens?
| themaninthedark wrote:
| The Us has never been a democracy, it has always been a
| (democratic)republic.
| Retric wrote:
| It started as a democratic republic but it isn't
| currently a democratic republic.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| Being a republic has nothing whatsoever to do with being
| a democracy. They are orthogonal concepts.
| localplume wrote:
| [dead]
| Retric wrote:
| Personally I would rather help people in a poorer area as
| people in my area are fine.
|
| Anyway, money is fungible you could say you're helping
| Mississippi schools just as people in Mississippi schools
| are helping your local schools. Or you can think of it
| like the electric grid where money doesn't get sent
| around the country just shifted left and right regionally
| which smooths things out.
| [deleted]
| jimbob45 wrote:
| This is the kind of response that makes back-end devs fume.
| "Why is our website going down with 100x the users we had
| last week? You guys must have built it incorrectly.".
| coredog64 wrote:
| Diseconomy of scale is a thing.
| chmod600 wrote:
| Does it? People complain a lot about Congress, and a lot of
| those problems are reasonably connected to size.
|
| More likely, there are a benefits and costs to a large
| government. I doubt it's scale-free.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Exactly. Pennsylvania has 13M people. Why can't
| Pennsylvania do this?
| kortilla wrote:
| The freedom of movement between states in the US makes
| this a challenge. States with better social safety nets
| end up attracting the low-income residents from other
| states.
| l33t233372 wrote:
| There is free movement between countries in Europe. I
| suppose there are generally some language barriers, but
| to me the situation seems fundamentally the same.
| kortilla wrote:
| Nope, the countries put up significant barriers to access
| social safety nets (permanent residency durations, proof
| of working during time before that, etc).
|
| In the US you can generally establish residency in a
| different state in the amount of time it takes to get a
| USPS change of address notice and a billing statement of
| some sort showing that you're able to receive mail there.
| dmoy wrote:
| But is there freedom of access to social systems?
|
| https://ind.nl/en/consequences-for-right-of-residence-
| when-a...
| AdrianB1 wrote:
| No, there is only a limited the freedom of travel between
| countries in EU (not Europe), but not of movement. For
| many years people from the newly admitted countries in EU
| had no right to work in the rest of EU. Most of the
| diplomas are not automatically valid in other countries
| and in some cases, not at all - example: pilot license
| for light planes, I have a Romanian license and I can fly
| in Greece a plane registered in Romania, but not a plane
| registered in Greece. If I switch to a Greek license,
| with training and exams, I am not allowed to fly Romanian
| planes :(
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| Very different systems, very different safety nets, and
| non-trivial language barriers.
|
| Yeah you can move wherever but you're not eligible for
| benefits, and the hiring managers want to know you speak
| fluent $LANGUAGE and have the right certifications from
| whatever credentialing system exists there.
|
| Common currency and regulatory standards, but it's not
| like you're just moving from Spain to Poland, at least
| not without serious hurdles.
| nukeman wrote:
| In fact, bureaucracy benefits from economies of scale. You
| can only get so small (population wise) before you can't
| shrink the number of bureaucrats any further.
| dsfyu404ed wrote:
| No. Leadership very much does not scale linearly. It gets
| more expensive the bigger you get.
|
| Look at all the process at BigCo vs the lean startup.
| Government also has to deal with all those tradeoffs
| inherent to people managing.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I am not buying the assertion at face value. The bigger the
| government is, the harder it is to scale it. Like any
| bureaucracy, it quickly gains its own life, customs and
| belief systems. If anything, the reason small d democracy
| works is because the government is local, everyone is
| participating and invested in outcome.
| Retric wrote:
| The absolute worst case is you break it into independent
| entities the way US cities operate, larger scales can
| help solve problems but you don't need to operate on
| them.
| cushychicken wrote:
| That seems like an acceptable excuse until you recognize that
| America also has about 23 times the GDP of the Netherlands -
| about 15% more money per person.
| idopmstuff wrote:
| It's not just about dollars per person - the difference in
| size of the countries makes country-wide solutions much
| more challenging. The Netherlands are about 16,000 square
| miles. The US is 3.8 million square miles.
|
| Taking something like medical treatment as an example, it's
| not just that you have to scale up the number of beds and
| doctors in each hospital - you need to build many, many
| more hospitals, staff them, ensure they have critical
| infrastructure, etc.
|
| That's not to say that the US is doing even close to
| enough, but the fact that GDP per capita doesn't do
| anything to capture the differences in magnitudes of
| solutions required by the two countries.
| cushychicken wrote:
| I'm not hearing concrete evidence of a gulf that can't be
| bridged by money.
| jackothy wrote:
| Building one hospital costs the same no matter how many
| hospitals are already in the country, or am I wrong?
| Because of this, if the USA has 23 times as much money as
| the Netherlands they should be able to build 23 times as
| many hospitals as the Netherlands. (Or am I wrong??)
| svieira wrote:
| Given this example, the ratio in square miles US to NL is
| approximately 237 / 1. So 23x the money and 237x the size
| leads to one order of magnitude less money per square
| mile when comparing the two situations.
| jackothy wrote:
| Good argument. So it's not about the total population
| size at all. But comparing GDP/square mile actually makes
| sense.
|
| But at the same time, the situation is nowhere near 10x
| worse in the US since you mostly just need hospitals
| close to the urban centers anyways.
|
| (Though I do grant you that quality of life for people in
| very rural areas will be a bit worse since they need to
| travel far)
| idopmstuff wrote:
| The issue is that you need to build more than 23 times as
| many hospitals - if you only build 23x the hospitals in a
| country that's over 200x larger in terms of geographic
| size, that means a huge number of people will be hours
| away from the closest hospital. The majority of those
| people will be in very rural areas, who are already
| generally underserved by social and other government
| services and who are often quite poor.
| jackothy wrote:
| Yes, it will be a drain on the US economy that the rural
| areas will require very high $/person to provide
| government services.
|
| However, the US still has a higher GDP per land area than
| countries such as Norway, Sweden, Canada and Australia.
|
| Furthermore, you would think that economies of scale
| should be quite beneficial for countries as large as the
| United States.
| spdionis wrote:
| The countries you mentioned probably have a higher % of
| uninhabited land.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Where have you ever seen engineering and cost scale like
| this?
| quacked wrote:
| More specifically the Dutch do not have multiple different
| multi-million strong underclasses with specific histories of
| dominated adversity. If you restrict the count of 333 million
| down to people who more closely match the financial and
| social background of the majority of the Dutch, you actually
| find a sub-nation inside America that's doing pretty well.
| mr90210 wrote:
| America is very unique in that sense, given its scale,
| history and status quo, the Americans will have to find an
| American-way to deal with some of its own challenges.
|
| It's not an easy task.
| The_Double wrote:
| The program in the article linked is specifically targeted
| to some of the poorer neighborhoods in Amsterdam. These
| neighborhoods are known for them being largely inhabited by
| the descendants of former slaves and colonized people from
| the former Dutch empire.
| quijoteuniv wrote:
| Not everything is about the US.
| cushychicken wrote:
| No, but the US happens to be where I live, so I have a
| vested interest in caring about it.
| madboston wrote:
| Hey we can help everyone out there. Just not in my backyard bro
| and definitely not with my tax $$ /s.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| Interesting thing to me is: This is a story about a
| supermarket doing this on their own, not with government
| assistance or for a tax break and not with tax dollars.
|
| The comments here are focused on how the US government should
| do more.
|
| In the US we have churches and other religious institutions
| that would help with problems like this locally but as time
| has gone on, their membership has dwindled. Perhaps we should
| take a look at this article and try to get our companies to
| emulate what is being done here?
| 93po wrote:
| This is a very libertarian mindset. The government exists
| (should exist) to serve its population. We shouldn't rely
| on private charity for the basics of a functioning society.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| I do think the government purpose is to serve it's
| population and society.
|
| But I also think that it is business's purpose to serve
| society as well. At some point we moved away from that.
|
| We used to have companies that would donate to the school
| library or to fund school technology programs. Now, some
| of that was rooted in the idea that they would need
| workers in the future so this was part of the pipeline
| but it was also building society. (You still do see
| companies donating money to sports programs, for their
| banner to be displayed)
|
| Currently companies are all complaining about the lack of
| X, yet are they funding training for X? No, we expect
| workers to come in fully trained and ready to go.
|
| Looking beyond that, companies are willing to up and
| shift counties in order to save money but that has
| effects on the local economy.
| yadaeno wrote:
| Its a prisoners dilemma if you expect business to
| contribute towards infrastructure that benefits
| everybody. education and infrastructure has to rely on
| the government for this reason.
| madboston wrote:
| even the most liberal parts of US will not go anywhere
| near doing such thing. As the name might suggest, I live
| in such area and the attitude towards such things will
| not get any backing anywhere (government or private
| businesses)
| 93po wrote:
| I mean, food stamps are a thing. Free school lunches are
| a thing/are becoming a thing. Public housing is a thing.
| Medicare/Medicaid is a thing. There's a lot more we could
| do to make these systems more efficient, less expensive
| for tax payers, and also provide them much more widely.
| Clearly there's public support for them, by most, in some
| capacity.
| dokem wrote:
| The Netherlands doesn't have tens of millions of citizens who
| refuse to engage with society in any meaningful way due to
| certain circumstances from many generations ago.
| contravariant wrote:
| True but that is a vacuous statement as the Netherlands does
| not have tens of millions of citizens.
| recuter wrote:
| Of course, because they didn't keep them anywhere near
| themselves:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Dutch_slavery
|
| It did help them jumpstart their economical development by..
| quite a lot tho and they have been very prudent with their
| money ever since.
| pipodeclown wrote:
| Sure but isn't that a bit of a chicken-egg question? Why
| doesn't that the Netherlands have a huge poor underclass?
| Perhaps it has something to do with education at all levels
| being practically free and having social safety nets to
| ensure people don't fall through the cracks of the system
| ending up being homeless/destitute. I can tell you btw we do
| have a significantly large underclass, they just don't live
| on the street or in crime ridden ghettos.
| lozenge wrote:
| It has more to do with the Dutch gaining their wealth
| through colonising their underclass, instead of what the US
| did which was import an underclass as slaves. Well, they
| did enslave Africans, but they were sold to the Americas
| instead of brought "home".
| l33t233372 wrote:
| Jim Crow, redlining, and other "official" forms of
| discrimination are not things from many generations ago.
| paulmd wrote:
| Many europeans would feel that precisely describes the roma.
| Hoo boy you wanna see a European get real ugly real fast, ask
| them about the Roma sometime. I'm not racist _but with those
| people it 's not really racism, it's just fact..._ type stuff
| will follow.
|
| but like, at the end of the day thinking that "multiple
| cultural groups" is the problem basically a coded/socially-
| acceptable way of saying that we can't have a social safety
| net because of black/hispanic people (or whatever disfavored
| minority/immigrant group is currently en-vogue). It always
| has been.
| 4gotunameagain wrote:
| You cannot dislike an antiquated society that contributes
| almost nothing to society and parasitises in multiple ways,
| without being a racist ?
|
| It has nothing to do with race. Roma people have
| continuously refused to integrate, which is perfectly fine
| if they don't want to, but then don't be a weight on the
| host society by receiving every form of financial support
| you can get your hands on, while being a centre for
| criminality, and demanding access to what a contributing
| member of society can access.
|
| I have experienced roma communities first hand. They shun
| their own who decide to get educated. Is that the kind of
| societies you'd like around your kids in the 21st century ?
|
| There must be a reason that people dislike certain
| societies.
| Symbiote wrote:
| We should separate race from lifestyle: Roma, and nomads
| or travellers.
|
| The British government doesn't, but it does show the
| "White Gypsy/Traveller" ethnicity has 31.2% "Never worked
| or long-term unemployed", higher than any other group
| [1].
|
| Particular types of petty crime obviously increased when
| travellers settled (temporarily) on some land near where
| I grew up. It happened every 18 months or so. However,
| this doesn't show up in arrest statistics, so I think
| it's that society is accustomed to the existing petty
| crime and notices the change.
|
| [1] https://www.ethnicity-facts-
| figures.service.gov.uk/uk-popula...
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| True but I wish that it wasn't necessary.
|
| There was a time when people with a minimum wage job could
| afford to pay rent. Now the government has to pay 10k euro to
| help them make ends meet.
| dandanua wrote:
| Meanwhile, in Russia some supermarkets use locks on garbage cans,
| so that poor won't gather around in the search for outdated food.
| euroderf wrote:
| Meanwhile, some American stores were pouring motor oil over
| discarded food to prevent foraging, until exposure and a public
| outcry.
| is_true wrote:
| Wow. That's bad in so many levels. One thing is to avoid
| other people to get the food but that method also pollutes a
| lot of water.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| My advice here is to be skeptical of outlandish claims on
| the Internet.
| troupe wrote:
| I think the health department in several places has put
| bleach on food that people were trying to distribute to
| the homeless. The logic was that the food wasn't prepared
| to commercial standards.
|
| https://nypost.com/2018/11/12/health-department-poured-
| bleac...
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Thanks for the link. That article is a bit one-sided and
| from a questionable news source, so I looked for a bit
| more nuance and found some here:
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/11/13/kansas-
| city...
|
| At least it's not motor oil. They seemed to have a kinda-
| sorta-plausible excuse for the bleach, but it sounds like
| they've made an internal decision that it was an
| overreaction and they stopped doing it.
|
| But I kinda see their point, too -- random people making
| food and handing it out sounds noble, but it probably
| should have some oversight too. Arguably that would have
| been the better response from the health department. I
| don't think the charity in this case did a particularly
| good job themselves of handling the situation. Hopefully
| everyone learned something and five years later it's no
| longer a problem.
| test1235 wrote:
| is that not to protect themselves against lawsuits? A better
| solution would be to have a big disclaimer about taking
| discards at your own risk.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Disclaimer might indicate that you allow it to happen. And
| you would really prefer not to. It might simply be because
| then people would just spread it around outside the box
| while searching for stuff. Reasonable balance is pretty
| hard to reach.
| mtmail wrote:
| Same in Germany. A Lidl supermarket employee explained in a TV
| interview it's a liability issue though. Somebody could hurt
| themselves entering a garbage box. Also supermarkets worry
| people throw in their own trash.
| sgerenser wrote:
| In the U.S. I frequently see dumpsters meant for store/office
| employee use locked, and the reason is always noted to
| prevent randoms from throwing their trash in there. They're
| usually hauled away less frequently than residential trash
| cans and they don't want it to fill up with bicycles,
| furniture, broken appliances, etc.
| lm28469 wrote:
| It happens in a lot of countries, not so long ago in France
| they'd spray bleach on the food before throwing it. It wasn't
| until 2016 that it was made illegal.
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